Epic Warfare or Epic Ponzi Scheme

Day 2,123, 03:49 • Published in Chile Bulgaria • by Stolch

For those who do not know what a ponzi scheme is, you can google it for a more detailed explanation. As simplified explanation is, that it is a scheme where the older investors get paid dividends from the investment of newer investor, thus to keep paying dividends you need more and more newer investors, but since there is no real income eventually there isn't enough newer investors to pay the dividends of all the older ones and the pyramid collapses.

So how is this applicable to the latest "contest" of Pinocchio. The similarities are not direct, as there is no real investment of "damage" generated from fighting other then can be though of as investment in terms of winning battles. So in this essence all are equal, but only in theory.

In reality this "contest" is in it's design highly biased towards European players/accounts and thus European dominant alliances. How you may ask, well here is a quick explanation:

Day change occurs at 2-4 am for most of the Americas, so in general those players get to the game about 6-7 hours later. In terms of battles that is 3-4 rounds depending on the length of the rounds.

Since now we have 4 countries in the top 10 from the Americas, there is a considerably more players then in the past from these time zones. Thus probably about 30% of all the players in the game are from this time zone.

Yesterday there was the Romanian AS, which acted as a lightening rod for all the damage in erep, it was natural to do and nothing could affect that. The battle however started 1 hour earlier then it should have, this among tactical concerns is now evident had another big repercussion. It allowed for the "ranking up" of European accounts in the new "contest" earlier then it would have happened otherwise. The significance of this will become apparent later.

So at day change we have about 60% of the game accounts, and they're divided about 2:1 in favour of TWO + RomTurk and friends. Everyone would have been (or most anyway) at full energy waiting for the start of the tournament. The first round wen epic in no time and so everyone was quickly gaining triple "prestige", thus ranking up very quickly. Together with the appeal of the Greeks (very active yesterday like they haven't been for 4 months) not to shoot at each other in the PvP, lead to many players reaching the first "expansion" of energy regeneration by the end of it. Most players didn't even need to use too many candies for that either, maybe 1-2.

So at this point the 2:1 advantage grows exponentially as the energy regenerated by the players i multiplied by 2, so now TWO + RomTurk and friends while still having the same advantage in relation to CoT 4:2, in real terms it has grown much more. In the next two rounds they recover energy that would otherwise take them 4 rounds. With a few saved candies (those with previous knowledge of the contest were especially advantaged, as they knew to save their candies) a large number of players reached the second "energy regeneration expansion", thus they were now recovering energy 3 times faster and so the advantage 0of TWO + RomTurk and friends grows again by a factor of 2, it is now 6:3.

At this point the earlier mention 6-7 hours have passed and the players from American time zone start joining the fight, however they are now worth 1/3rd of what they usually are. So while under normal circumstances they would at this point reduce the advantage to 2:1.5, they're only reducing it to 6:3.5.

More importantly they now start to climb the latter, but as European players have already spent all their reserves and are now only fighting with newly generated energy, epic battles take more time to happen and so the american players take longer to "rank up" their prestige. This is not as acute while still at EUropean time zone, but will be a problem in American time zone, where the relation of power is inverted and even bigger.

Hence why there was only a few "epic" rounds and only at the end, which did not allow American players on their prime time to rank up with triple bonus using the PvP as European players could. This is why at the end of day one, European countries on average had their top 100 at 1500 prestige and above, while American countries at 750 prestige and above.

To further make things worst, the "houses" for extra energy storage compound this advantage, as European players reached the second one, and so they could store an extra 100 energy while sleeping, then American players. This is important because at a 3 times higher regeneration rate of energy the normal storage gets filled up quickly and the rest is lost while players sleep. Still in the morning European players wake up with 14% more energy then american players, which only compounds the advantage even more.

So start day 2, the race continues and so European players will always be reaching the next and next levels first and using them for a few hours before American players. This in essence has extended the domination time zone of European nations and as TWO + RomTurk and friends are almost entirely European base, this has been greatly beneficial and will only become more and more beneficial for the rest of the contest.

Here comes the final dagger, while this "front" runner advantage is happening, there will be no back end "compensation. The "event" ends for everyone at the same time. The result will be that over the next 7 days what CoT has fought for to regain over the past month will be handed back to TWO + RomTurk and friends due to the Pinocchio intervention and tipping of scales on the battlefield. This is assuming they can perform the entire minimum of coordination needed to disperse the damage as needed.

More importantly however some customers are allowed to gain a "better" product then others and for longer, as European players will be able to reach farther in their accumulation of "prestige: then American players with equal other factors alone, but with the "mechanics" set in place with which epic rounds will be mostly in european times, this difference will be much higher.

I'll not go into the fact that the rules of the "event" were edited again, nor the fact that admins are actively influencing key battles in the game with their participation on the battlefield. I'll post only 2 pics which speak for themselves:

pick 1



pick 2




What I want to point out additionally is what I've talked about already before.


This org: SUNdae is an org of the biggest and oldest Romanian MU in the game. They recently celebrated 5 years in the game. Xstasia is part of this MU as well as have been many past and current admins from Romanian "heritage".

So this org, which is very famous to all that trade on the MM regularly, until not so long ago had 8 million CC in it. It is now empty and there are o offers on the MM from it. So all 8 million have either been spent or used to buy up weapons and/or food in anticipation of the current "event". There is no point to speculate which may e true, most likely both. Considering that yesterday Romania had COs on the Air strike battle for most of the day and then on the Bulgarian RW as well, hence they spent huge amounts of money, but only they know how much, probably into the millions.

More importantly this org got a lot 9of it's money from trading on the MM, it would regularly pass through with offers of 6-7 million at a time and unlike other orgs which would drop from page one after selling between 20-100K, it would stay there until it sold everything. This of course was happening early on while the price of gold was starting to go down and those generated huge profits by reselling the gold right way. On a single go around it would generate anywhere from 500K to 1 million in profits. Of course this is not possible without the protection of Pinocchio who would bump off other orgs, but not this one.

Now when you add to this org the other 207 that Romania possesses, most of which have been emptied out it seems, it becomes clear what sort of income advantage is possible right now.

Now everyone will ask, why the beep would Pinocchio want to prop up the stronger alliance in the game and anger it's player base even further and thus potentially cut his profits. The answer is simple, other then the x-EDEN connected admins who may or may not have "revenge" against certain countries in mind, Pinocchio is trying to burn through the "products" stockpiles in the game. Basically with this damage inflation, there is also a food and weapons consumption inflation. So as both will start to be consumed at 3-4-5-6 to 10-15 times faster rates over the next 6 days, most of the stockpiles will e burnt through.

Weather this is in preparation of some "new" economic measure or change would be speculation on my part, as I'm not one of the privileged ones who get the inside information ahead of time to prepare. What I know it will achieve is impoverish the ordinary players and transfer most of the in-game currency towards big "farm: accounts and speculators. Of course most of them are older players and accounts, thus once again there will be an amplification of the already existing disbalance in the game not only between players, but also between alliances as we know CoT is a young alliance, bot in it's existence and in the composition of it's players.

Once again, the best thing one can say is that Pinocchio is entirely incompetent and employes changes without even considering their effect on the player community, balance of the game and economy of the game. While player may for a short time have the feeling that the economy is improving because prices are rising, the truth is, that nothing is changing and they will actually be worst off after these 7 days then before them. At worst, Pinocchio is directly trying to influence the battles and political movements in the game, alliance structures and compositions.

All of this is making the game less enjoyable not only for those smitten by Pinocchio but the others benefiting as well, because Romania didn't win yesterday, as they won a fixed match, s there is no glory, and no joy in such victories. It will not be remembered as a great battle as was Bulgarian AS a week ago in which both sides fought hard and while only one side was winner on the battlefield all players were winners from the experience they had, nail bitting rounds and so on.